"[Required]" Data Annotation Not Enforced on POST Methods

Question

I had the idea to use Data Annotations in order to validate ModelState. This works wonderfully. The problem I am having is that the [Required] Data Annotation is being enforced on [Key] fields on post. Our data layer takes care of setting Id's and we don't want anyone consuming the service to have to worry about Id's. Is there a way around this in WebApi2?

I have looked at this question, and removing the Id field from ModelState in the POST method before checking for valid ModelState would work. The issue with that is that we use a filter for ModelState.

EDIT:

After doing some more research, what I am essentially wanting to do is what the [Bind] attribute does in MVC. After some research, it does not look like this is a feature that has yet been implemented in WebApi. If anyone has any ideas, feel free to post them.

Answer 1

What you can do is to replace your entity with a data transfer object, which is identical to your original entity without the ID field. For example,

The original entity may look like this

public class User 
    {
        [Required]
        public Guid UserId { get; set; }
        public string Firstname { get; set; }
        public string Lastname { get; set; }
        public string Username { get; set; }
        public string Email { get; set; }

    }

and the DTO may look like this

public class UserDto 
    {

        public string Firstname { get; set; }
        public string Lastname { get; set; }
        public string Username { get; set; }
        public string Email { get; set; }

    }

Hope this helps.